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Diplomacy Diplomacy happens between factions in the campaign mode. Diplomatic actions include declarations of war and peace, trade agreements, alliances and more. Diplomatic actions are received or can be proposed on the diplomacy screen.

Some diplomatic actions are unilateral, such as a declaration of war or cancellation of an alliance, while others must be agreed on by both parties, such as trade agreements or alliances. A diplomatic offer may be accepted or rejected outright, or a counter-offer may be proposed. Breaking a diplomatic agreement can lead to lower attitude and lower reliability - see below.

For a detailed guide on how to do diplomacy in Immortal Empires, see this article.

Diplomacy screen[ | ]

Information about the player’s faction is shown on the left panel on the Diplomacy screen. If no second faction has been selected, the central panel shows a list of known factions.

The tooltips on the attitude icons shows detailed information about each faction's standing with the player along with the factors influencing one faction’s view towards another are shown on the tooltip of the attitude icons on the Diplomacy screen.

Additionally, just underneath the AI faction leader's portrait and their strength ranking, their diplomatic traits will be displayed.

Double-click a faction to open negotiations. Once negotiations are started the central panel can be used to construct a diplomatic proposal.

In the bottom center of the diplomacy screen is the button for War coordination. Only available for allies and vassals.

Diplomatic options[ | ]

  • Treaty Non Aggression PactNon-aggression pact: A mutual promise not to attack each other.
  • Treaty Military Access Military access: One faction gives permission for another faction's armies to enter their territory without any diplomatic penalties.
  • Treaty Trade Agreement Trade Agreement: An option to generate income for both sides.
  • Treaty Defensive Alliance Defensive alliance: Promise to defend each other in case one of your factions is attacked.
  • Treaty Military Alliance Military alliance: Promise to join future wars that each of you start, and to co-operate.
  • Icon confederation Confederation: Permanent unification with the target faction of the same race.
  • Treaty vassal Become Vassal: Target faction is subjugated by yours.
  • Treaty War Declare War: Begin open hostilities with a faction.
    • Peace Treaty: ask to mutually end the war.
    • Join War: ask faction B to join your war against faction C.
  • Payments: Offer a gift to another faction, or demand money from them.
  • Threaten: Threaten to declare war on another faction if they don't accept the deal. Only in TWW3.
  • Trade settlement: Gift or exchange a settlement with another faction. Only in TWW3. Only works with settlements near the other parties' borders or within a province where they already own another settlement,

In some cases you may not be able to engage in certain types of diplomacy with a faction. For instance:

  • During the Chaos Invasion in Warhammer 1 and Warhammer 2, some factions cannot negotiate with the Warriors of Chaos.
  • Tomb Kings factions cannot confederate with each other.
  • Vampire Coast factions cannot confederate with each other.
  • In Warhammer 3, most Warriors of Chaos factions cannot confederate with each other. The exceptions are Shadow Legion and Warhost of the Apocalypse who can confederate any of the other WoC factions.
  • During an Endgame scenario in Immortal Empires, you cannot negotiate with the factions who are causing the endgame scenario. Any existing treaty with them will be broken when it starts.
  • Some factions do not trade.
  • Vassals cannot be directly interacted with in most cases, as they automatically share diplomacy relations towards anyone else with their masters.
  • Some factions cannot confederate with eachother through the diplomacy screen and have their own specific mechanics instead (Elector Counts for the Empire, Tower of Zharr for Chaos Dwarfs etc.)

Note that raiding does not count as breaking a diplomatic agreement (although it does lower diplomatic relations with the faction you're raiding).

War coordination[ | ]

Defensive allies, military allies and vassals can all be interacted with via the War coordination screen.

Reliability rating[ | ]

Reliability, also called trustworthiness, is a rating given to factions to indicate how likely they are to break agreements.

A high trustworthiness rating means other factions will be more likely to offer and accept deals/agreements with you. It reflects how trustworthy/reliable you are seen by others, and is separate from attitude (see below) which reflects how much a faction likes another faction. Unlike attitude, which is dependent on the faction, reliability is a global rating. This means all factions will see you as steadfast or untrustworthy etc.

This means that if you have low reliability, then even a friendly faction might refuse to do deals with you, because they just don't trust you to keep your promises. They are also more likely to end existing treaties with you.

If a faction breaks a diplomatic agreement, especially a recently made one, that faction's reliability rating will decrease. The diplomacy window will show a warning about breaking recent treaties on setup, though not always (For example, if another faction asks you to join their war with a faction you recently made a treaty with). Declaring war shortly after breaking treaties (especially non-aggression pacts) has the same effect, as does declaring war shortly after making a peace treaty.

Reliability ratings from highest to lowest:

  1. Steadfast / Very High
  2. Dependable / High
  3. Trustworthy / Medium
  4. Untrustworthy / Low
  5. Unreliable / Very Low

Low reliability will recover over time, as long as no further actions lower it again. Though with several penalties being applied in a short time-frame, it may take a long time for this to be noticeable due to how long it will take to recover from Unreliable to Untrustworthy.

The Threaten diplomatic option will always lower Reliability, regardless of outcome.

Strength Rank[ | ]

Strength Rank appears in the diplomacy screen. You can also sort factions by strength rank. This is an overall aggregate of how strong a faction is, taking into account the amount of armies, strength of armies, number of settlements etc that the faction has.

Main Threat: In Total War: Warhammer III, a faction will either consider itself to be safe or it will have another faction that it considers it's main threat. Having a high strength rank and being nearby to a faction, as well as having poor diplomatic relations with a faction (poor attitude towards each other) contributes to being considered a main threat.

Attitude[ | ]

In general, you want other factions to like you, as this greatly reduces the chance of them declaring war on you and invading, as well as increased their chance of accepting various pacts/agreements/deals. Each faction has an attitude towards your own, determined by a large number of factors. This is expressed by two point values, current and a summation of current modifiers, which the current will gradually shift towards over time. Many modifiers themselves will gradually increase or decrease over time (treaties increase over time, misdeeds become less relevant etc).

These include:

  • Racial bias (Aversion), according to the table appended at the end of this section. Besides general modifiers, some factions also have extra modifiers towards specific factions.
  • Your behavior: Each faction has its own allies and foes. If you make war, commit hero actions, or otherwise attack an ally, their attitude towards you will reflect that. If you make war on a hated foe, they will like you more.
    • Trespassing: if you move your armies onto another faction's territory, this is trespassing and will cause a negative modifier to diplomatic relations with that faction. You can avoid this by getting a military access or alliance agreement with them.
      • If another faction's army is trespassing on your territory, in Total War: Warhammer III you can click a button above their army to threaten them to leave. If they fail to leave in 2 turns, you can then declare war on them with no diplomatic penalty for breaking treaties. Issuing a warning itself does however cause a negative modifier.
  • Great Power: Most factions will condemn you slightly for being too powerful. This is mostly a balancing mechanic. Though the contrary exists as well, some factions are impressed by your great power.
  • Main Threat: if a faction considers you their main threat, then this harms their diplomatic relations with you.
  • Treaties: The more treaties you have with the faction, the more will they like you. Furthermore, you receive a snowballing bonus to diplomatic relationships the longer the treaty is in effect, which makes establishing positive diplomatic relations early paramount to creating a strong power bloc.
    • This also takes into account treaties with other factions, depending on relations between them. Mutual good relations give further benefits, while treaties with their enemies will lower their opinion. The same applies for negative effects in relation (ie having a shared enemy is beneficial).
  • Wars: Besides being at War causing an additional penalty, taking offensive actions will further impact the overall state. Post-battle options against settlements in particular can apply huge negative modifiers for sacking or razing.
  • Campaign scripting: Campaigns can also force certain modifiers.
    • In the Eye of the Vortex campaign, each ritual you accomplish will grant a bonus to your relations with factions of your own race vying for control of the vortex and a malus to opposite races trying to achieve the same. Eventually, the four main factions will explicitly refuse to even enter negotiations with one another, remaining in a state of permanent war.
    • The Old World and Mortal Empires campaigns have a Chaos Invasion. This causes some factions to gain stronger aversion towards certain others. Additionally, certain factions gain the Shield of Civilization trait giving them attitude bonuses towards each other.
Diplomatic racial biases
Factions Beastmen Bretonnia Chaos Dwarfs Warriors of Chaos Dark Elves Dwarfs The Empire Grand Cathay Greenskins High Elves Kislev Khorne Lizardmen Norsca Nurgle Ogre Kingdoms Slaanesh Skaven Southern Realms Tzeentch Vampire Counts Wood Elves Vampire Coast Tomb Kings
Beastmen 0 -60 0 -10 -60 -60 -40 -40 -60 -40 0 -10 -40 -30 -100 -15 0
Bretonnia -60 +10 -60 -40 0 0 -40 0 0 0 -40 -40 0 -15 -10 -40 0
Chaos Dwarfs
Warriors of Chaos 0 -60 0 0 -60 -60 -40 -60 -60 -60 0 0 -40 -30 -60 -15
Dark Elves -10 -40 0 -10 -40 -40 -10 -60 -40 -40 -30 0 -40 -30 -40 -20 0
Dwarfs -60 0 -60 -40 0 0 -60 -10 0 0 -40 -40 0 -40 -10 -40 0
The Empire -60 0 -60 -40 0 0 -40 +10 0 0 -40 -40 0 -15 -10 -40 0
Grand Cathay
Greenskins -40 -40 -40 -10 -60 -40 0 -60 -40 -40 -30 -30 -40 -30 -40 -20 0
High Elves -40 0 -60 -60 -10 +10 -60 0 0 0 -40 -40 0 -30 -10 -40 0
Khorne
Kislev -60 0 -60 -40 0 0 -40 0 0 0 -40 -40 0 -40 -10 0 0
Lizardmen -40 0 -60 -40 0 0 -40 0 0 +20 -30 -60 0 -40 0 -40 -10
Norsca 0 -60 0 -30 -40 -40 -30 -40 -40 -30 0 -10 -40 -40 -60 -20 0
Nurgle
Ogre Kingdoms
Slaanesh
Skaven -10 -40 0 0 -40 -40 -30 -40 -40 -60 -10 0 -40 -30 -40 -30 0
Southern Realms -40 0 -40 -40 0 0 -40 0 0 0 -40 -40 0 -30 -10 -40 0
Tzeentch
Vampire Counts -30 -15 -30 -30 -40 -15 -30 -30 -40 -40 -30 -30 -30 0 -30 -20 0
Wood Elves -100 -10 -60 -40 -10 -10 -40 0 -10 0 -60 -40 -10 -30 0 0 0
Vampire Coast -15 -40 -15 -20 -40 -40 -20 -40 0 -40 -20 -30 -40 -10 -40 -20 -40
Tomb Kings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -10 0 0 0 0 0 -20 -10
Diplomacy

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